Chapter Text
“End of the standard. I can see the body heat from the tets all the way from here.” Apparently it was a holiday that Aandrisks and Humans both shared, celebrating the end of the calendar in their own ways. The Humans had drinks and colorful explosions all over the night sky wherever they were, and the Aandrisks… well, they did what they did best. But Sissix had been so absorbed in her government-mandated babysitting job (from what she understood, it was like the Human equivalent of being a temporary house parent) that she’d almost forgotten all about the festivities.
Not that she could have taken part in any of them. Not that she could do anything with fucking Corbin hanging around her like a stubborn piece of molt. Even now he was insisting on taking up valuable space by the window, so he could get adequate light for looking over the mounds of formwork on his scrib. A normal person would have just turned on the overhead lights, but apparently they made the room too bright and hot. They weren’t even heat lamps, for stars’ sake! But there was nothing Sissix could do but share the view of the city with him, and try her best to ignore that he was even there.
But she couldn’t even do that when he decided to open his mouth.
"I'm so sorry the illegality of my existence is keeping you from attending the annual orgy." He kept scrolling through his scrib to emphasise that he was not sorry in the slightest.
“Blow it out your liver, Corbin.” That probably wasn’t the right body part, but Sissix had had enough of thinking about Humans for a long while. A shame that just one person could almost ruin his whole species, but stars, she couldn’t even stand being around Ashby or Rosemary at that moment. Most Aandarisks enjoyed any close contact with any species, but for the first time in her memory all Sissix wanted was to be alone. If she couldn’t even go to one fucking tet , then being by herself was preferable.
Though, maybe she should comm Rose once Corbin was finally gone. The girl was going through so much, ever since she decided to come out and publicly decry her father’s dealings with the Toremi. She’d used what happened at Hedra Ka (though now it was just called ‘Hedra’, since the Ka clan was too busy tearing itself apart to keep their hold over it) as a platform for her peace campaign, which was the only bit of good to come out of that utter debacle.
Sissix still had nightmares about trying to pilot the sub-layer by herself. Ones where Ohan died mid-flight, or she died, or everyone else died except for her…
Those ones had included Corbin among the casualties, but she still cried despite that. Now she just wanted to throw the bastard out of an airlock, or even through the window she was standing right in front of. But the whole building was Aeluon design, so they likely had some safety measure in place that would just wrap around anyone who tried to launch themselves to the ground waiting fifty storeys below. With how mind-numbing they’d made bureaucracy in the GC, she had to wonder how many of the regular workers tried doing that just to spice up their day a little. Maybe they’d attach elastic cords around their waists, like Humans were apparently fond of doing before they figured out how to switch gravity on and off.
Lovey did that sometimes, if Kizzy begged her and Ashby wasn’t on board. Just a small part of the ship with its arti-grav nets disabled, so Kizzy could float all around the vents and get shrimp crumbs all over the ceiling and Lovey would pretend to not mind even as one of her voxes on the other side of the ship turned on to beg whoever was nearby to get a mop and...
And that had been Lovey. Considerate. Selfless. Immaculate to a minor fault, and even then she wouldn’t mention the fault so she didn’t make her crew worry. Not just another AI. More of a person than some flesh-and-blood people. More of a person than fucking Corbin, at least.
Stars, Sissix couldn’t even fucking mourn properly with him around. Just because it had been a standard since they’d lost her didn’t mean it still didn’t hurt. She missed Lovey, and Jenks, and how much they had both loved each other. Maybe it was just a novelty thing to her, but dammit it was good , it was proof that AIs could be so much more than just code following orders if you let them be .
She’d thought being away from the Wayfarer , away from reminders of Lovey’s absence, would make things a little easier. She had to be away from it anyway, to be Corbin’s ‘sponsor’ for his citizenship application. But it was torture. She missed waking up to the ship being just the right temperature, just warm enough that her joints weren’t solid as stone without making the other crewmates sweat. She missed going to sleep with the ship’s hum in the background, a constant reassurance that everything was working as intended.
She just… she missed the ship. But not as much as she missed the person that should have been watching over it.
“If this thing is really so important, I don’t even see how I’m stopping you from going.” Corbin’s nasal drawl suddenly snapped Sissix out of her private eulogy, and it took her a moment to realise that he was still talking about the tet . The one she could still see raging away in the distance, that suddenly seemed so pointless to think about when she was so caught up in homesickness.
“This is one of the very few hearings where a guardian’s presence isn’t required,” Corbin went on, obliviously and stupidly and begging for a slap with something that would leave a mark. “So long as you’re back here before the end of it-”
“They’re not going to let me out of the building to go bask in my culture,” Sissix hissed, “and a tet that doesn’t last for a week isn’t one worth going to. So yes, you are stopping me from going.” She didn’t even want to go, not anymore, but the fact that she didn’t even have the choice made her want to tear her feathers out and shove them down Corbin’s throat. But that would be a waste of perfectly good (and, quite frankly, beautiful) feathers.
Even if Corbin was looking so insufferably smug, as if he enjoyed knowing how much of a disruption to her life he was being (because of course he fucking would), she’d just find another way to throttle him. Non-lethally. Blunted claws around his neck.
“If there was any Human that could keep you tied down,” he said, picking up a different scrib just so he didn’t have to juggle between tabs on one, “I would have guessed only Ashby could fit the bill. Or that clerk.”
Never mind the blunted claws. Sissix flexed her fingers carefully, one by one, making sure they caught the light of the lamps hanging outside. Her next molt wouldn’t be for some months, and her talons would stay sharp as ever until then.
“You shut your mouth about her,” she warned, struggling not to hiss so the asshole wouldn’t have even more ammunition to use against her.
(Then again, even when she was on her best behavior he still ended up calling her a lizard .)
“Does she even know you’re going to these things when she isn’t around?” he asked, as if it was an accusation, as if he had any fucking idea or say in what Sissix and Rosemary’s relationship was supposed to be.
“She does, ” Sissix snapped, “and she doesn’t care , so don’t think for one fucking second that you can ruin everything by telling her shit that’s none of your business !” It took all of her dwindling willpower not to sweep her tail across his desk and send his stupid scribs scattering all over the floor.
“I thought your business was my business,” he drawled. “And vice-versa. Isn’t that how the sponsorship works?”
“My life has nothing to do with whatever you’re gonna do with yours. You’ve already stolen a standard of it that I’m never gonna get back, and that’s more than I’d ever want to give you.”
For the first time in that whole awful evening, Corbin looked up from his array of screens. His eyes looked as glassy as the scribs they reflected. “You didn’t have to do all this, you know.”
“I did,” Sissix bit back. “Because I like Ashby, and I like my home, and I wouldn’t be able to live in it with a clear conscience if I’d left another crewmate to rot on the other side of the galaxy.”
‘ Yes,’ she told herself, ‘even a crewmate like you.’
It was hard enough living on the ship without Lovey, or with Ohan trying to adjust to the new singular existence that he hadn’t asked for.
(But what else were they supposed to do when a friend was dying right in front of them?)
If she had been the only person in the whole galaxy who could have possibly helped Corbin, and she chose not to, she’d never have forgiven herself. Ashby wouldn’t have been able to look her in the eyes anymore, and Kizzy wouldn’t have offered her any snacks ever again, and Rosemary...
Stars, Rosemary would have thought her a monster. Sissix would have been no better than her father, condemning people to death on the other side of the galaxy for nothing but selfishness’ sake.
But, in the end, it wasn’t any of them who made the decision for her. She made the decision for herself, because it was the right thing to do. A standard to an Aandrisk wasn’t that much when compared to a Human’s lifespan, anyway. One standard for her was like five for the likes of Corbin, and though she definitely wouldn’t have given up five standards of her life for him she could deal with just one that was, thank stars, already coming to an end.
She just had to survive the next few weeks.
Just a few more weeks around him.
She’d made it this far. She could push herself through that last lap, surely. She could ignore anything else that came out of Corbin’s mouth, any blatant attempt to irritate her or goad her into hissing at him.
She could ignore anything...
“So you draw the line at letting clones be tortured, but leaving your kids behind to die is fine?”
Anything, except for that.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sissix was too confused to truly be offended (since this was Corbin, she was certain that ‘offended’ was the intended effect). She hadn’t left her kids behind, she hadn’t wanted any of them to die -
And just how the hell did he even know she had offspring?!
“I overheard your argument with Ashby,” he said through a clenched jaw, going right back to refusing to look at her. “About Ohan. About… saving him. He said you had children. But, obviously, they’re not very important to you.”
He sounded like he wanted to yell. Sissix wished that he would, to just get it out of the way, to actually explain what the fuck he was really trying to say.
“No. They’re not. But I don’t know who told you they would die -”
“No one told me,” Corbin snapped, actually shocking Sissix into silence as his filed-down teeth clashed in the air and he launched himself onto his feet. “It’s just most likely that they will. But so long as they’re out of your hands not taking up space, then who cares?” And then he sat back down like someone had just amplified his gravity twofold, staring at his scrib as if nothing had just happened.
Humans were so fucking exhausting .
“Where the fuck did this come from?” Sissix felt her tail whipping all around behind her, her own agitation surely causing untold property damage that she couldn’t care less about (whatever she broke that wasn’t a bone, the Aeluons could easily just replace). “Is it really about Ohan? Stars, for the first time in my life I was on your side! If you hadn’t injected him then I would have, damn whatever Ashby said! Why are you like this, Corbin?!”
She felt her claws tearing through her own feathers, as she scraped them against her scalp in pure frustration.
“You’re just… fucking…!”
Her arms fell, with colored tufts of fur trapped in her hands, and she couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Remshak-kathet-maldensk-ahsshek-kalransa!”
On Hashkath, saying something like that out loud would have gotten her thrown out of her own hatch family. Here, in the capital of the Galactic Commons with no other Aandrisks in earshot, it only earned her a narrow glare from Corbin.
“Insults are usually more effective if the other person understands what you’re saying,” he told her.
“It means,” Sissix snarled, “that you’re the kind of hatchling that would have gotten buried , even after your egg was broken!”
It was actually much worse than that. But that was the most succinct translation she could give. And it was enough to completely knock Corbin off of his pedestal, which was more than good enough for her.
“...You’re saying that I’m a child that should have died, are you?” he asked, and his voice sounded like it was wobbling through the air.
“Not should have ,” Sissix corrected, only now remembering that Humans were especially touchy when it came to talking about infants. “But…”
Her feathers, which had formed a flared-out mane around her neck, had just started to lie flat when a harsh bark made them shoot up again in shock. It was Corbin, and he was laughing.
“Brilliant,” he said, pushing himself to his feet once again. “Fucking brilliant, Sissix. Believe it or not, I’ve tried to be understanding. I’ve tried to be empathetic. I know that not all Harmagians are greedy warmongers, and not all Quelin are bastards- even with what they did to me- but Aandrisks really are all the same, aren’t you?” He abandoned his scribs in a scattered pile on the table, devoting all his attention to Sissix while she tried to stop her lips from curling back from her fangs.
“You better choose your next words very fucking carefully-” Her warning came on the heels of a snarl, but Corbin interrupted it with another harsh and mocking laugh.
“I don’t have to. I’ve had them stored up here for a very long time,” he pointed a jagged finger to his head as he told her this. “You’re just living proof that I was right to think them. Because your people, Sissix, your entire species prides itself on such dedication to decadence and selfishness that you go out and couple with any sentient creature that will have you, and then when you inevitably get pregnant you refuse to take responsibility, you don’t even teach your own children how to survive!”
It wasn’t the first time Corbin had been furious, especially not the first time specifically at Sissix. But this was more of a lecture than a true rant, the kind of lecture that Sissix had heard snippets of from countless bigoted bastards long before she even met the likes of Corbin. She’d thought she’d learned to tune them out long ago… until Ashby had tried to get her to listen. She’d ignored him because, bless his heart and everything around it, like all Humans he just didn’t know what he was talking about.
Corbin was the exact same, but she wouldn’t ignore him because she didn’t want to start a fight. No, the fight had already begun a long time ago. She was just trying to get to the end of it in one piece.
“Are you done yet?” she asked, unable to stop it from sounding like a growl and not really caring either way.
“No… no I’m not.” Corbin was breathing heavily, his hair hanging over his forehead in a limp lock of sweat. His face was red, and so were his hands- at some point that Sissix hadn’t noticed, he’d broken one of his scribs, and the glass of the screen had pierced his palms.
“If anything,” he hissed, almost sounding like a true Aandrisk, “I’m jealous of how you treat your young.” He seemed to realise now that his hands were bleeding, and he looked down at them like he wasn’t sure if they were really attached to his arms.
He was a crewmate, which meant Sissix had the urge to go over and help him. But he was also Corbin, so she stayed right where she was even as her own claws twitched with accidental sympathy.
“And why is that?” she asked, no longer snarling, unsure of what to think at all anymore. Corbin trudged past her towards the outline of the door in the wall, cradling his worse-worn hand with the other. He was still angry… but she wasn’t anymore.
Because this wasn’t truly anger from him. This was fear. Corbin was scared , not of the blood or pain he’d caused himself. No, Sissix didn’t know what he was scared of until he told her.
“Because when Aandrisk children can’t figure it all out for themselves,” he said, with his back to her, “at least they don’t live long enough for it to be an issue.”
There was no door to slam behind him. Thanks to Aeluon engineering, the wall simply melted back into place when he left. Yet the choked weight of his voice was enough to leave behind vibrations that shook the room long after his absence.
Sissix was alone, at last. She could have called Rosemary. She could have cranked up the temperature as high as it would go. She could have said ‘fuck it’ and crept over to the tet just to see if she recognised anyone.
She didn’t do any of that.
She sat by the window, at the table with the shattered scribs.
She looked over at the lights and sounds of the tet .
She thought of how many Aandrisk-Corbins were being conceived over there, to never be born or wanted.
And she realised, finally, why Ashby had been so disgusted with her, and why Corbin truly hated her.